


The House at the End of the World

by Delphi



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Comrades in Arms, Drama, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-20
Updated: 2006-06-20
Packaged: 2017-10-05 10:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/40803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Delphi/pseuds/Delphi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three soldiers battle time at the war's farthest outpost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The House at the End of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lookfar](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Lookfar).



> Written for the 2006 Sun and Smut Exchange on LJ.

The old lighthouse had stood dark for fifty years or more. It was the last relic left on the island, which was really a rock hardly deserving of the name at the far-flung edge of the Hebrides. Greenshanks and gulls were the only inhabitants any more, nesting in the rocks and the gallery while the endless rain slowly beat the paint from the tower, leaving it the same pale grey as the sky above. The house attached leaned slightly east with the wind, badly out of repair, and an ancient bicycle rusted outside in the overgrown grass.

A ferry had once come every fortnight, but it had ceased its route long ago, and the local fishing boats steered clear of the shoals. Had anyone been within sighting distance on a rare clear night in early July, however, he might have been witness to a strange sight. Just after sunset, three shadows flitted across the full moon and alit upon the craggy shore. A moment later, a trio of blue lights began weaving their way up to the house, overlapping and parting like swarming fireflies; then a spark of orange flared behind a grimy pane, quickly replaced by the waxy glow of lamplight.

A fearsome face suddenly appeared at the window. It looked as though it had been carved from stone or the gnarled trunk of an ancient oak, motionless save for one vivid pale eye rolling wildly in its socket, peering out into the darkness as though it could glean all the night's secrets. Then the curtains were yanked shut with a cloud of upswept dust, and no more could be seen.

In the days to come, even stranger sounds could be heard from the lighthouse: curses, and quarrels, and mutterings and exclamations in English and Latin and a curious pidgin of both. Once, a sound seemed to emanate from the tower itself, a deep, sonorous hum that shook the very ground, sending ripples out across the water.

The silence that followed was of an altogether different sort than that which had preceded it. It would have taken a keen observer to mark the change. The wind still swept in from the sea, howling through the cliffs at night, and water still crashed against the rocks in agitated frenzy. But their sounds disturbed no rest, brought no protestations, and left only quiet in between. The birds, to a one, had fled.

* * *

He hates the silence. It makes him think too much.

An Auror's life isn't supposed to lend itself to contemplation. It's everything the recruiters have made it out to be for over a century: noble and important and exciting, exciting like a nightmare that thrashes you in your sleep and heaves you back to waking with a pounding heart the way even the most pleasant dreams can never do. Too much adrenaline as a matter of course, and one day there's only numbness where normal used to be.

He keeps watch at night while the other two sleep, searching the skies, the widely cast wards strumming tautly around him. Today has been uneventful, no owls, nor visitors friendly or otherwise. He makes a spiral over the island on broomstick around midnight, passing between the dull clouds and the glinting wet earth below. All is quiet. All is calm.

The kitchen light is lit when he returns to the rickety little house and sets down at the back door. He glances inside, and the figure at the table lazily raises a hand in his direction, forbearing any need for him to charge in and teach her a lesson. He nods to himself. If she still needs lessoning by now, he'll teach her one by sending her straight home and out of his way.

She turns to smile at him as he enters, and he catches her face changing. It's subtle—her expression is just as tired, the curve of her mouth just as rueful—but her features have shifted into those he's most familiar with, a shade less delicate than they were a moment before. She pokes a tantalisingly bare leg out from under the tent of a man's nightshirt, pushing a chair back from the table.

He opts for a glass of brandy and sits down heavily, stretching out his bad leg with a quiet grunt. The first sip burns, warming him up on the way down.

"All quiet on the western front?" Tonks asks softly, and as he looks her up and down with a touch too much familiarity, the garish purple paint on her toenails suddenly strikes him as at odds with the weariness in her eyes. It's as though the two should cancel each other out.

"All quiet," he says, accustomed by now to her queer turns of phrase.

She looks relieved, and he's reminded once again just how short a time she's really been on the job.

"Don't."

He pauses, narrowing his eyes. The girl has a dictionary for his face, though God knows where she got it.

Her voice thaws a little. "Don't give me that look, please." She takes a drink and peers at him over the rim of her cup. "I've been getting it often enough from Remus."

Not that he's going to get into the middle of that, but silence is encouragement enough for her. She heaves a sigh and shakes her head. "_Men_..."

He hums noncommittally, trying to make short work of his drink.

"...I mean, sometimes I don't even know if he's trying to protect me or if he's trying to protect himself because he thinks I'm going to bollocks this up, you know? If I was a man, if I was Sirius, would he be trying to send me away?" A stubborn expression crosses her face. She seems to take a certain satisfaction in saying her kinsman's name aloud, almost daring someone to object. Little wonder. Lupin likely isn't inclined to hearing it, if there's any stock to the rumours that were fluttering around about those two back in the day.

He snorts. "Probably not. But he wouldn't have liked it any better."

The fire goes out of her a little at that, and she drains the last of her cup, her hair fading from pink to black in tiger stripes. Her eyelids begin to sink down, an oddly endearing sight.

"Get some sleep," he says quietly. "Tomorrow might be the big day."

Tonks's lips part, as he knew they would, then close, as he hoped they would. She stands, straightening her nightshirt, and then she goes to put her cup in the sink, briefly laying a hand on his shoulder as she passes. She squeezes gently. "Goodnight, Moody."

He watches her go, his eye following her upstairs to the bedroom where Lupin rolls over to feign sleep before she opens the door. She pulls off her nightshirt and lingers naked at the bedside for a moment before slipping in beside Lupin, and then the angle is wrong to see anything more. No sounds follow, no voices, only a quiet tension that hangs in the air as palpably as a spell.

Silence—his thoughts rush in to fill it. Nymphadora Tonks is a good witch, despite her troubles, despite the fact that she was never meant to be here at all. And Lupin...there is far worse company than Remus Lupin. Dependable fellow. They're all dependable, and that's Minerva's voice there. Reliable, dependable. Expendable.

An old cripple, a werewolf, and a stubborn girl along for the ride.

The clock in the sitting room chimes, and he supposes he might make another patrol, make himself useful. He won't be sleeping tonight anyhow. He takes his broom back outside into the expectant night, snuffing out the lamp before he goes. He glances back at the darkened house just once, to the upstairs bedroom, up a flight of stairs that he can't even climb without stopping to rest halfway.

He used to be a man of action.

* * *

"Remus?"

"Hm?" He glances up, pushing his eggs around with his fork.

"...pass the pepper?"

He blinks, then nudges the shaker across the table.

Tonks's hand brushes his as she takes it, her fingers warm.

His gaze sidesteps hers as he turns to look out the window, watching the sheets of rain billowing outside. A moment passes, and he clears his throat. "It's cold for August, isn't it?"

It's the first time they've spoken in two days.

* * *

She's decided it's like final exams. The days here stretch out like the weeks before her NEWTs did, the waiting just as bad as what she's waiting for. She has likewise decided not to mention this theory to Moody or Remus; they probably hadn't even invented teenagers yet when Moody was one, and Remus...well, Remus would only go quiet, for more reasons than she'd care to name.

She remembers it, though, when her mouth tastes of metal no matter what she eats and a familiar weight settles in the pit of her stomach. She never studied when she was in school, never "lived up to her potential," as her teachers and her head of house and her parents would have put it. They thought she was lazy, and maybe she was, but now she's coming to see that she was frightened too. Because if she studied, it meant she cared, and then if she failed, there would be no laughing it off.

Out of habit, she wakes at dawn, an awful practice drilled into her at the barracks. More often than not, Remus is still sleeping like the dead when she opens her eyes, and she'll sit up beside him, lingering a moment under the warm covers. She strokes his hair and the rasp of stubble on his cheek. Sometimes he smiles in his sleep.

After, she comes down in her robes and puts the tea on, then loosens the complicated knot of spells that bars entrance to the base of the lighthouse tower. She shivers as she steps over the threshold. A cool draught of old magic washes over her, pulling up gooseflesh and making her nipples harden. She can almost smell it, taste it, the charge of magic the likes of which she's never encountered before.

She counts the crates and cases and trunks that rattle against their chains as she passes, all present and accounted for. It's become a game of sorts, guessing what's inside each. The dusty-dry smell that not even the mildew can quash makes her guess the bulk is books, grimoires, scrolls. Potions—there was the clink of glass when they moved the haul in. Most of the boxes are inscribed with Professor Dumbledore's lengthy monogram. One of the casks looks as old as Merlin.

Out here in the middle of nowhere, in a dank room with dripping walls, lies what is perhaps the greatest collection of magic that has ever been gathered in one place: an encyclopaedia of things that cannot be allowed to fall into enemy hands.

She locks the room up tightly behind her, the door fading into the wall. A muffled thump slowly approaches from the sitting room. It's rare that she catches Moody sleeping, and most mornings he accompanies her out into the rain. Today it's mere drizzle, a fine mist around them as they check the wards around the building. Moody doesn't believe in small talk, but the silence between them is a companionable thing, one she no longer feels the need to fill with brainless chatter. Most of the time.

She stops and stoops, touching one of the twelve black boxes set up around the base of the tower and joined by filament, aware of both of Moody's eyes on her hands.

"Kablooey."

He glares at her, and she tries to grin, but it won't come. Her mouth twists into a pretzel instead. When they first came to the island, she swore she wouldn't have the courage to stay without Remus, but as time wears on, it's Moody she finds herself leaning on. She loves Remus with all her heart, but sometimes there's comfort in someone who sees the world in black and white—who still believes in Right and Wrong, majuscule letters and all.

Not long after, when Moody is napping on the couch and Remus is cooking breakfast, she locks herself in the bathroom and stares into the mirror, changing her face so quickly it makes her dizzy. Her features flow like water, like the penny-slot machines at Blackpool: brown hair, blue hair, green eyes, red lips...

She stops. She makes her hair black and fine, her mouth straight, her cheekbones sharp, her skin faintly lined with wrinkles. It's a sober face, one that belongs to a woman who doesn't make jokes about death, who studies hard, who takes things seriously, for good or ill.

Remus never believes her when she says she loves looking at him; he laughed when she admitted she fancied the pants off Moody when she was in training. Scars and crow's feet and crooked smiles, those are the faces she adores. Their lives are written on them in a way that can't ever be erased, there for all to see, badges of honour. That's character. That's why she's here, wishing just maybe that it will leave its mark on her too.

She lets her features slip back into familiar order: a long, cheerful face with a shock of strawberry hair and a wide grin. The girl in the mirror doesn't care if they fail.

* * *

"_Remus_..."

"_Oh, bloody hell_..."

They're quarrelling again.

Bill Weasley came in today by the Floo, tracking in London mud and staying just long enough to trade reports and drop off rations. God only knows what set the lovebirds off this time, but it's been slammed doors and cold shoulders all day, and only him keeping even one eye out for incomers.

He flops down on the creaky chesterfield that smells of the damp and turns down the crackling wireless in favour of better entertainment. He peeks upstairs, then pauses. The corner of his mouth twitches.

Ah.

All right, all right...as long as it's been, there's no blaming him for mistaking that sound for a quarrel.

The headboard begins to thump against the wall.

He grins despite himself and shifts to get a good eyeful. The old plumbing has shaken off the rust lately, cooped up with those two, and he'd be hard-pressed to name one of them the better sight. If he cranes his neck, he can just about glimpse the little smile on Tonks' lips, her eyes squeezed shut tight. Her arms are around Lupin' neck, her ankles around his ears, and Jesus Christ, but Lupin has a fine arse on him and a grin on his face to melt the knickers off a vestal virgin.

"_Oh God, Remus_..."

One hand pauses a long moment at his hip before unfastening a few buttons and slipping into his robes. The other pulls out his handkerchief as the thumping upstairs quickens.

* * *

They had been quarrelling again.

His fault, maybe, though he'd not admit it, and it was Tonks who spent the whole morning talking Bill's ear off anyhow, looking at him so hungrily that Remus couldn't tell whether she was lusting after home or another not-quite-human. At least he'd had enough sense not to accuse her of the latter, but his offer to send her back to London was enough to bring the storm clouds into the house:

Tonks sits down wearily at the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. "You can be a real prat sometimes, you know that?"

He knows.

She sighs. "D'you think Moody heard us?"

He laughs shortly, sitting down at the opposite corner of the mattress, drained. He's no good at fighting. "Probably."

It gives her the giggles for some reason—maybe imagining the lecture Moody would give them, chastising them like bickering children—and it proves contagious. The corner of his mouth twitches.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye, her irises flashing green. He thinks of Moody downstairs listening as she leans towards him. And for the first time in their short, strange courtship, he moves to meet her halfway.

* * *

Afterwards, she stretches happily, warm right down to her bones. The room smells like sex, and the sun has momentarily peeked out from behind the clouds. She closes her eyes, humming softly in contentment. "D'you think he heard us?" she asks again, rather more smugly this time.

Remus says nothing, but when he lifts his head from her chest to kiss her, she can feel the smile on his lips.

* * *

Three days before September's full moon, word comes that there will be no Wolfsbane Potion this month. Mundungus's connection has dried up, now-familiar words that dance around yet another casualty.

Moody finds him in the cellar that night, where he's setting up the locks and chains.

"And what are you up to?"

Remus bolts an iron collar onto the end of a chain and tests it with a shocking spell, 200-stone weight. "What does it look like?"

Moody slowly makes his way down the cellar steps, peering into every musty corner. "Close quarters."

He nods. It's cramped and cold, and there's a godawful smell, but the walls are lined with stone and he's already put up the soundproofing charms. "I've made do with worse."

A snort. Moody leans against the wall, regarding him inscrutably. "There's a whole empty rock out there, in case you haven't noticed. Probably be pissing rain, but at least you could stretch your legs."

He blinks in surprise at the suggestion. "That might not be entirely safe."

It's a rare thing to see Alastor Moody pause in mid-thought once he gets going: there's almost an audible stop between him opening his mouth and the moment he realises that Remus meant safe for him and Tonks, not for himself.

But after a silent instant, the man shakes his head. "Don't be an idiot. We'll leave some food and drink out, set up a little lean-to out by that elm if you'll have mind to use it."

Remus hesitates, turning another steel cable into links. He can already feel the waxing, a subtle pull from under his skin, and after five-hundred and seventeen full moons, the prospect of running loose—letting go just as casually as Moody's voice makes it sound—is something to dread even more than the confinement.

It makes him think about James.

Funny thing, for all that Sirius is the fresher wound, it's James who haunts him at every turn here. Maybe it's the briefings from the Order, with Harry's name so carefully omitted that he's all Remus can think about, or maybe it's this place, the lonely ghost of Godric's Hollow in its last days hovering over it. Or maybe it's because Moody has that same little quirk of a smile—not Sirius's have at 'em grin, the one he wore when he plotted big and drank himself senseless and hurtled headlong into trouble. But James, maybe no more cautious, but calmer.

It makes Remus calmer too.

Being a werewolf...he's read almost every book written on the subject, and none of them have ever got it quite right. He doesn't have a wolf's sense of smell when he's on two legs, and he's no stronger than any man in his condition should be. He wouldn't have made it this far if he believed for one second that he was nothing but a wolf in human skin. This close to the full moon, though, it's almost like knowing a second language. Every gesture suddenly takes on a wealth of meaning, a tone of voice a hundred subtle shades.

So, when Moody straightens up with the stubbornness of an old dog who isn't done leading the pack just yet, Remus shivers.

"I'm not having you shut up down here. You'll catch your death."

And that grumbling voice this close to the moon change gives him a terrible urge to drop to his knees and open Moody's robes and, oh god, just suck his cock, and have a hand in his hair and nothing else to think about...

"You all right?"

A clap on the shoulder nearly knocks him over, and he rights himself with a burning face. He quickly nods. "Just fine."

This place is making him crazy.

* * *

That night, the wolf runs free.

He hurts. His bones. But the air smells of grass water fish and he follows the warm trails. Skittering mice. Crunch. Hot blood.

He runs. Long and hard, he runs and runs until the scents blur by him, until the ache in his bones turns into exhausted warmth. He creeps back along his own trail. Meat. Dead meat. Cold but bloody. He settles in out of the rain. There is water to drink.

There are human-smells. Old male, young female. Faint down here, far-off up there. He can see. Perched up like birds on top of the tall metal-stone. Watching him. He marks his den, and he sleeps.

* * *

Moody won't let her see.

"He wouldn't want you looking. Ask me again when the pair of you aren't living in sin."

When she wakes up the next dawn, bundled up in her sleeping bag on the gallery and drooling on Moody's shoulder, Remus has already changed, lying pale and still under the makeshift shelter below. They fly down to collect him.

There are tufts of grey fur on the ground around him, as well as a gnawed soup bone. Dirt under Remus' fingernails and dried blood on his lips. She looks away guiltily for an instant, understanding slamming down hard. Then she steels herself and crouches down, stroking Remus's hair as Moody wraps him up in a blanket and levitates him.

Moody's hand rests against Remus's shoulder as they bring him back up to the house; there's a faint spiderweb of scars across his knuckles, and as she steals a glance, his thumb strokes back and forth. It fills her with a surprising warmth.

She brushes her hand against his, and to her surprise, he doesn't pull away.

* * *

The rain turns to sleet in October. They take shifts going out to check the wards and circle the island, and in the evening, Lupin and Tonks have taken to joining him in the sitting room. They listen to the wireless when the signal comes in, and when it doesn't, he sometimes reads aloud from one of the pulpy Muggle novels the last owners left on the shelf.

Tonks seems to get a laugh out of it, curled up under Lupin's arm on the chesterfield, and there's a warm fire, and sometimes there's cider, and funny as it is given what they were sent here to do, it's a damned sight more comfortable than Alastor has been in as long as he can remember.

* * *

"You knew him back then." The fire is dying down now, the night quiet and the room bathed in a tired orange glow.

Remus softly hums a 'yes', even if it didn't really sound like a question, as Tonks sends the quilt gently floating towards Moody, who's snoring away in the chair. It lands with barely a whisper, but Moody twitches in his sleep nonetheless, and the eye whirls in its water glass to stare piercingly at them.

Tonks cuddles back down against his side, resting her head on his shoulder. Her hair smells like rose hips, and her breath tickles against the crook of his neck. "What was he like?"

He strokes her arm, watching as Moody settles back into quiet snores—taking away seventeen years, taking away the worst of the scars and some of the grey and a touch of the wariness.

"He was...a magnificent bastard." He grins despite himself, remembering the impressions Sirius used to do, ranting and snarling, putting James and Peter in stitches. Moody scared the piss out of Sirius. The man didn't care for his japes, never really trusted him.

His smile falters a moment, and he shakes his head. "Fearless. Mad as a hatter even then, of course."

Tonks laughs. "Of course."

Sometimes it seems as if everything was bigger in those days, monumental the way only youth and memory can build it up to be. Good against Evil, and of course the good guys were going to win, and every mission was the big one, and everybody was larger than life. Alastor Moody was the epitome of that. He was _the_ Auror, a grizzled veteran even then, and if you weren't the sort who had been so torn up by tradition that you bucked and fought at the faintest whiff of it, all you wanted to do was sit at his feet and learn everything you could from him.

Moody smiled more back then, even if he could turn to all-business on a Knut, and he joked more, and touched more—a clap on the arm, a shake of the scruff. And, sometimes, Moody looked at him in a way he hadn't been ready to think about.

"He was quite a man."

Tonks pinches him. "Still is—he could kick your arse, and mine."

He smiles. She's right, but so is he. In truth, it's a comfort to know that he isn't the only one who's still scarred from those days, outside and in. He isn't the only one who never quite moved on. "I stand corrected."

She takes his hand, playing with his fingers before pressing his palm flat against her stomach. She cocks her head to one side, her hair curling in consideration. "He's rather sexy for an old bugger, don't you think?"

It startles a laugh out of him, and Moody jerks in his sleep—if he's really asleep at all. He wouldn't put anything past the man.

He shakes his head at her nerve and says naught in reply, but he slips two fingers into her robes, gently teasing the bare inch of skin between her camisole and knickers.

* * *

They're at it again.

He comes in from his patrol, shaking the weather off his cloak, and hears a bedspring squeak upstairs. He scowls for a moment. Word from the Order is three days late, and you'd think they'd have more serious things on their minds. But a moment passes, and he hears a soft, sweet giggle, and his temper rolls over and goes back to sleep.

Off with his wet boot, and he drops into the armchair and props his foot up on the ottoman. He fiddles with a week-old copy of the Prophet, barely fit for loo-paper when it was printed and twice as worthless now. The crossword's already done, the ink nearly worn off the Quidditch page. He steals a look upstairs.

He puts the paper down.

Tonks's hair is purple today, and it seems the carpet matches the drapes; he glimpses lavender between Lupin's fingers as they stroke between her thighs. Then a flash of wet, glinting pink. He gives himself an idle rub as he watches them, Lupin's lips at her pert little tits, and Lord, doesn't it look like Lupin knows how to use that mouth of his. Watching this has become a pleasure a better man would make a guilty one. He himself has settled for lonely as a familiar arousal burns hot in his belly.

They're taking their time with it. Most often it's a quick headboard-banger or knee-wobbler when they think he's sleeping, when they think they're quiet. Must be something in the air today, though, because they're loud and lazy. The prospect of settling in for a good long distraction is catching, and it takes a moment for him to realise that both of them keep looking to the door.

He follows their gaze and pauses. It's open. Not unlocked-open, but open.

That brings him up short. He frowns. He'll beat both their arses black and blue if they didn't even hear him come in. Experimentally, he raises his false leg and lets it thump heavily against the floorboards.

They both give a start, but it doesn't stop them. A moment passes, and then he sees Lupin lean in to whisper something in Tonks's ear: a solemn question. The corners of her mouth tilt up before she shapes a 'yes' in reply and her hand slips down his belly. Alastor follows it, his eye almost quivering as he stares fixedly, wondering what in the hell they're playing at.

And then, as Tonks reaches a shapely leg off the foot of the bed and nudges the door open another inch with the tip of her toe, he is suddenly very tired of wondering. Tired of watching. Tired of thinking.

He is on his feet in an instant, pausing only briefly at the bottom of the stairs. Each step echoes hollowly as he climbs, pressing on past the first pang, his hand clutching the rail tightly. He reaches the landing, and for a moment the open space taunts him with only a hand's breadth view. The curve of a white hip, a scarred shoulder.

He cannot see their faces; he is not certain of his welcome. But he does not peer through the faded flower print and damp plaster. He puts his foot over the threshold, and for the first time in far too long, leaps before he looks.

* * *

On the night of October 31st, the tower falls.

It begins with the merest speck on the horizon in the early evening, a twilight hour with the sun and moon both lit up behind the storm clouds. The riders come like carrion crows, a flock of black-clad figures crossing the sea. Their faces are bone-white, almost gleaming in the dimness.

The sky flashes when they reach the cliffs, a burst of sheet lightning rippling as an insubstantial veil around the rock is violently ripped in two. Far below, the string of charges around the base of the tower come to life, blinking crimson lights in a patient rhythm, ready to wait until the end of time.

The door to the decrepit house, shuddering in the wind, flies open. The pale light inside is eclipsed: one shadow that slowly reveals itself to be three before merging again in the shifting light. A man stands in front, a broomstick in one hand and a wooden wand in the other. He steps out, unblinking against the maelstrom, and the pair behind him follow without hesitation.

"God help us all."


End file.
